18: Dance of Pales
by Silent Elegy
Summary: Lost in the future, Danny and Valerie must settle their differences once and for all, or the pale ghosts of the Malice will make sure that they don't have one.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom and all related characters are the product of Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon studios. All musical lyrics are the products of their respective owners.Kat/Electra, Sandruu, and Lucyare the property of Silent Elegy.

PreNote: This fic takes place right on the heels of 'A Step Too Far', so if you haven't read that one yet, you might want to do so.

* * *

She quietly strummed her guitar, humming under her breath. Lying on a pallet on the floor just a few feet away, a strangely familiar girl blinked slowly and turned her head. "Who are you?" the familiar girl managed. 

The young woman looked like she'd just stepped out of the sixties. Her long hair, so blonde it might have been white, cascaded around her like a shimmering, almost glowing, waterfall. Possibly the only reason she could even see was a wide pink headband situated just above her eyes. She smiled slightly and didn't bother to raise her eyes from the strings. "Picture yourself in a boat on a river…" she sang rather than reply.

Valerie rolled her eyes and pulled herself to a sitting position, forcibly shoving away the memories. She idly wondered if she'd hit Danny, but couldn't seem to make herself feel victorious. Instead, she only felt worse at the thought.

"You really shouldn't be up," the woman said between lines.

"Yeah? Well, I've got things to do. Where am I?"

The woman sighed and laid her guitar across her folded legs before making eye contact through small, round, rose-colored sunglasses. Something about her was off somehow, but the young ghost hunter couldn't immediately place what. "We are on the Mother Earth," she replied in a slightly vague voice. Valerie had the sudden terrifying impression that she'd teleported back in time despite the two flashing and obviously mechanical bracelets the woman wore.

"I mean specifically."

"Specifics are the tools of the Man, man. He uses them to control us. Let it all go. Prance naked in a field of flowers."

"What?"

A shadow fell across her from the door, and a familiar voice said, "Don't mind Screw Luce. She thinks she's a hippie."

Valerie blinked a few times and shook her head, certain that she was seeing things. "Sandruu?" she asked tentatively.

The cyborg lifted his only available eyebrow and opened his mouth, but the person Valerie suddenly placed as his younger sister interrupted. "Hey, I like that, man! I'm going to call you that. It's like Andrew, only with an 'S' on the front."

The newly christened Sandruu rolled his eye. "Oh, that's great. Thank you, miss. Let's add random letters to my name. Hey, while we're at it, why not a 'D'?"

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds let out a bright peal of laughter and seemed to simply unfold to her feet. "No, that's perfect, man! We'll call you Dandruff! It'll be totally copasetic!"

"You're the Fenton kids," Valerie breathed, unsure whether she was happy to see Sandruu again or not.

The siblings returned their disapproving attention to the uninvited guest. "Hey, man. Don't flip. You sound like Val Grey, and she's a total buzz kill."

"Could you possibly speak English once in a while?" Sandruu demanded. He lifted his chin in the girl's direction and asked, "What's your name?"

"Valerie," she answered, almost defiantly, pulling herself to her feet. "Valerie Grey."

Danny sighed deeply as his brain kicked in again. He could smell metal and chemicals, but it wasn't the familiar smell of his parents' basement. Like Valerie, he shoved the memories of what had happened away, blinked to clear the sleep fog from his eyes, and sat up. Looking around, he almost didn't notice ghostly scientist, so unexpected was the sight.

"Technus?" he ventured.

Technus shrugged, smirking. "Don't worry, ghost child. After you married my daughter, we called a truce."

"What?" Danny demanded.

"Daddy-o, don't tease the boy," Kat replied, joining her father in the boy's field of vision. She tried to sound disapproving, but her amusement was all too plain. She shook her head. "We're not married. Relax."

Rather than take her advice, he tensed further. "So, what? You've joined him in trying to kill me? Is that what this is all about?" Father and daughter exchanged confused glances, so he went on. The fact that she didn't seem to know what he was talking about only served to make him even angrier. "Hacking into my computer? Sending my private thoughts to the entire school? Any of that ring a bell?"

Technus snickered and floated away. "Ah, this'll be entertaining," he muttered.

Kat spared a moment to glare before answering quietly, "Phantom, that was almost thirty years ago."

About to respond venomously, Danny suddenly felt his brain slam to a halt. "T-thirty…years?" he managed. The gremlin nodded slowly. "Valerie?"

"She's fine, or will be soon. I was told to leave her for someone else to find, although Clockwork didn't mention who it would be. Just rest here until you feel better."

Danny stared at the floor for a few minutes, his mind racing in small circles. "What about him?" he asked.

Kat flashed her Cheshire Cat grin. "Well, he wasn't exactly lying about the truce, just the purpose for it. You'll find out when you get there." She moved off, and the ghost boy tried not to wonder if he ever would "get there."

* * *

A/N: _/shuffles around a bit/_ Yes, I know, I said Sandruu wasn't coming back. I didn't mean to; it just happened. I swear. And now you all know why the cliffie in the last one had to be. 


	2. Chapter One

"A home for fleas. A hive for bees. A nest for birds. There ain't no words for the beauty, the splendor, the wonder of my haaaiiirr…"

Valerie stared across the table at the young would-be singer and wondered. She didn't wonder much of anything in particular, she just wondered. It was mainly centered around the state of Lucy Fenton's sanity or lack thereof. She turned her attention to where Sandruu had picked up his half of a phone conversation.

"Okay, so we're in agreement? Dad's just going to stay in Stratford? …Yeah, that's what I was thinking. She's glaring daggers at me over here. …No. Hey, listen. Make sure he doesn't forget to feed Ancel. …Yeah, I know. But still. Just remind him, would you? …Thank you. …Yeah, you, too. Bye."

"Who's Ancel?" the girl asked.

"My dog."

"Bangled, dangled, spangled and spaghettiii! Oh, say, can you see…my eyes…if you can, then, my hair's too short!"

"Luce!" Sandruu interrupted, or tried to. She didn't actually stop. "We've had enough of the serenade. Put the guitar away."

"Doo doo doo, doo doo. Doo doo doo, doo-Hey!"

Fed up with being ignored, her older brother had simply reached across the table and snatched it away. Valerie walked to the window to stare into the street, listening with half an ear as the younger sibling broke into an _a cappella_ rendition of Creeque Alley at the top of her lungs. Sandruu, she could almost tolerate. He reminded her of Danny…of Fenton, rather. Lucy, however, looked far too much like her father's alter ego, despite her taste in pale pink, floral print.

"So who's your mother?" she asked, not really caring.

"What're you, crazy, man?" Lucy stopped singing long enough to ask. "We tell you that; you make sure it never happens; we can say later to living."

Sandruu, who had opened his mouth to respond, blinked in shocked puzzlement. "She wouldn't do that. …Would you?"

"I might," Valerie agreed. There was a very prolonged silence, suddenly shattered, quite literally, by the sound of a glass full of water as it was crushed in a mechanical hand.

"Why do you hate him so much?" Sandruu demanded. "He's never been anything but good to you!"

"Ease off, Sandy," Lucy whispered. "You're not going to make the girl change her mind by wiggin' out like that." After a moment, a crash heralded Sandruu's chair hitting the floor as he stood and stalked from the room. Valerie was startled enough that she finally turned back and accidentally met Lucy's covered eyes. The woman smiled apologetically. "Boys, hey?"

Valerie was surprised by how hurt she felt. His reaction was perfectly acceptable; indeed, she would have expected worse. But why should she care about what he thought? He was the son of her worst enemy.

And she had known that when she first decided that she liked him. They saved each other's lives. He was obviously the same person she knew, the person he would become. He couldn't have lied, could he? Facing him again, she found she couldn't believe that. With a confused sigh, she sat down again. "What is it with you and the sixties anyway?" she asked, more harshly than intended.

Lucy shrugged and reached across the table to reclaim her guitar. "Ghosts obsess, man," she explained as though it should have been obvious. "Andy not so much, but Daddy's thing is ghost fighting. Me? I like that old fashioned rock and roll. Got to loving the sixties and just couldn't help myself, you know?" She started playing an old Buddy Holly song, then switched to something by Don McLain.

The young ghost hunter managed to stay where she was until her hostess reached the lines, "And I know that you're in love with him, 'cause I saw you dancin' in the gym…" She couldn't place any reason why the lines should bother her, but a feeling like mingled rage and despair filled her mind. "Shut up!" she snarled, earning a sour chord from the surprised player. She shoved away from the table and stalked away, unconsciously mimicking Sandruu's egress.

In the relative safety of the living room, the cyborg was draped across a couch, twirling his eyepiece around in his fingers. It was somewhat nauseating to see that empty socket, but she dropped into a chair where she could stare at him. Eventually, his eye flicked in her direction. "Did I tell you how I got this?" he asked.

Valerie nodded. "You said something about a war in Greenland."

Sandruu nodded as well. "We were ordered to ambush a small encampment of c…uh…the enemy. But they were waiting for us. One of our guys…" He stopped to laugh bitterly. "One of my buddies was selling information. He was there with us when we got captured, and he was so…so…indignant that he was being treated like the rest of us."

The young ghost hunter was unsure where he was going with his story, but some instinct told her she didn't want to hear. She stayed where she was anyway.

"They were laughing at us and…I don't know. I just snapped. I do that sometimes. I'm not as much a ghost as Dad or Screw Luce, but I guess I still inherited one's temper. It's like all I could see was red. I knew exactly what I was doing, but I lost my human morals for a little while, I guess. Or maybe I was just angry and trying to find something to blame my actions on. I don't know.

"I lunged for him; snapped his neck like a twig. The guards around us just laughed, and that just made me even more angry. I started going after them and they were shooting at me, and my buddies, the few that survived my stupidity that is, told me my eyes were bright enough to light up the night. There were four of us left when I finally collapsed, and one of them died later. The other side just ran."

"He was on life support for, like, six months," Lucy added from the threshold.

"It was five," her brother corrected. He shook his head mournfully. "Best five months of my life…"

"What about your friends?" Valerie demanded. "Don't you care about them?"

His face darkened considerably, and he closed his eye. "They're murder victims," he said shortly, as though that explained everything.

"I'll tell you later, maybe," Lucy added quietly. "We try not to talk about it around him."

"The moral of the story," the cyborg announced loudly, replacing his eyepiece, "is that lies can get you ripped in half by angry part ghosts if you're not careful."

"He lied to me!" Valerie leapt to defend herself.

"And when, pray tell, did you get around to telling him about how you're a ghost hunter who was outfitted by his mortal enemy?"

She opened her mouth, intent on a scathing response, but what he asked suddenly struck her like a Ghost Ray. "Vlad…Masters?"

"Sandy, quit flapping your lips," the younger Fenton piped up. "You're going to change the past, man."

"No!" Valerie burst out. "I want to know! What about Mr. Masters?"

Lucy shook her head. "I guess you're screwed, man, because we aren't saying another word. Got it, Candy Sandy?"

"Would you quit calling me Sandy?"

After a few seconds deliberation, Valerie decided to laugh. "You don't want to be called 'Sandy', but you don't mind 'Candy'?"

Sandruu gave an exaggerated eye roll. "Oh, no. I mind that, too. She just always calls me Candy. My name is Andrew. I will, on occasion, tolerate Andy."

Lucy laughed brightly. "You better get used to that 'S', Candy Sandy. It's what you're going by when the CW sends you back time."

He shuddered. "Don't remind me."

The conversation devolved into another sibling spat, but Valerie didn't pay much attention. It suddenly hit her that the Fenton children were human. Sandruu, she could understand. He practically was human aside from an eye that glowed when he got angry. Lucy on the other hand…

She looked too much like Phantom, and Valerie had never really thought of him as a person. She realized that she was still thinking of him as two different people, but she couldn't seem to stop. They were two different people, in her eyes. But suddenly, seeing his children act so human forced her to see him as human. She bit back the desire to cry and fled the room.

* * *

Danny jumped through Kat's glowing portal and turned back to watch it close. She had expressed disapproval at his desire to find Valerie and had tried to talk him out of it. Technus had made a scathing comment about stupid humans trying to get themselves killed. Fortunately for the boy's peace of mind, he had seemed less concerned than irritated at the thought of having to deal with Danny Phantom as a full ghost on a regular basis. 

Finally back in the real world, Danny transformed and flew into the sky. "Now," he mused aloud. "Kat says she found us outside the Fenton Portal…" With a decisive nod, he angled for home.

* * *

A/N: Well, I think I can safely say that I'm back to daily updates again. Sweet!


	3. Chapter Two

There was a pounding noise, the sound of something heavier than a human's tread running up a set of stairs. Shouting, followed by that bright, obnoxious laughter. The sound of a guitar being tuned. More shouting, followed by the quiet beeping of her ghost alarm. After a few seconds, it went off again, just in time for the young woman who triggered it to resume tuning.

The bracelets probably dampened her powers, Valerie realized with that part of her mind that had taken to always analyzing things like that. There had to be that part, the part that noticed everything and told the rest before she could figure it out. She would have been long since killed by ghosts if it weren't there.

It had failed her when it came to Danny, though.

Or had it? She had to admit, once she finally calmed down, that she wasn't terribly surprised. In fact, she felt a little stupid that she hadn't known. It should have been blatantly obvious. But humans couldn't also be ghosts, and Danny was quite clearly alive. There was absolutely no reason to think that the apparently normal boy was also a ghost. A half ghost…

But obviously, it was possible. Sandruu and Lucy were both part ghost, and both of them had pulses. Or at the very least, they breathed.

She had spent what remained of the previous day hiding in the room they gave her. There was actually a bed; apparently, the blanket and sleeping bag arrangement was simply the hippie girl's preference. Valerie lay staring at the ceiling, wondering where Danny was. Was he even still alive? His two children existed, so he had to be, right?

A thumping noise as Sandruu ran back downstairs. Yet more shouting and something about the Fenton house. Something else about Valerie. She crept forward and eased the bedroom door open.

"No, _our_ Val!" Sandruu called in response to something she didn't hear. "Come on, Luce! The mall's under attack and she's not there?"

"Who's attacking the mall?" Valerie demanded.

A few feet away, the cyborg glanced in her direction. "Fright Knight. You know him, right?"

Valerie stepped the rest of the way into the hall. "And you two aren't going to do anything about it?"

"Hey, it's all cool, man!" Lucy replied, peeking around the corner. "Peace and love make the world go around."

Sandruu rolled his eye. "We're not going anywhere near the Guys in White," he translated. "Last time we tried to help them, my leg got snapped in half, and Luce had to spend a week in the Ghost Zone before her form was stable again. It was not fun. Trust me, they can take care of themselves."

There was a door slam that caused everyone to jump followed by a pounding noise on the front door and muffled yelling. The siblings exchanged glances and seemed to come to some kind of agreement; Lucy fell in behind her brother, who crept forward cautiously. After a moment, Valerie followed. She eased up to the corner and was just about to peek around it when the younger Fenton squealed, "Daddy!"

"Hey, sweetie," was the tired yet loving response. Valerie's breath caught; of course, it wasn't the voice she expected. Danny would be quite a bit older.

"Ms. Grey outside?" Sandruu asked around the time the pounding noise stopped. He sounded on the verge of laughter.

She could almost hear the eye roll. "When is she not?"

There was prolonged silence, the kind a family might share in greeting after being parted for a long time. Eventually, Sandruu, sounding supremely annoyed, began, "I thought you were going to feed my dog."

Low laughter. "Tucker is feeding your insane, vicious monster dog. If you wanted to keep me there, why did you tell him, of all people, that we had a guest?"

Bright laughter. "That was Uncle Tuck? You must have been blitzed or something, man!"

"I was not 'blitzed'."

The voices were closer; they had probably moved to the living room. As if to prove the observation, the couch groaned in protest of Sandruu's metal weight. Valerie listened to the pleasantries for a few minutes longer, then took a breath to steady herself and peered around the corner.

In one corner of her mind, she was happy to see that he hadn't inherited his parents' fashion sense. That corner of her mind couldn't help but appreciate how he'd grown, so she focused on it to keep the rest of her brain from shutting down. Even if she hadn't known who he was, he was quite clearly a Fenton. He almost could have been his father, in fact, save that his bulk was mostly muscle. Then his eyes met hers and, a moment of unsure recognition later, he was that nervous, blushing fourteen-year-old again. "Hello, Valerie," he said quietly.

The part of her mind that was still admiring thrilled a bit at the purring tone, and she squashed it down before it could respond with a blush of her own. "Phantom," she greeted him. Her tone was as cold as she could have wished, and it didn't make her feel quite as victorious as she thought it should.

Sandruu shot her a warning glare and shifted to a posture that implied she would be on the floor before she could blink if she tried anything. Next to him, Lucy leaned forward, as well, though what the ghostly hippie could possibly have done was under debate. "Don't you choose-off my daddy, man," she said. The steel menace in her voice would have been alarming if she'd had any power to back it up.

"I can fight my own battles, kids," Dan said, standing. Valerie's breath caught a second time as she glared up at him. It suddenly hit her that he could swat her aside like a fly and save himself thirty years worth of grief. So why didn't he? He sighed sadly and shook his head. "Thirty years too late maybe, but if you want to try something, here I am. I won't stop you."

The ghost hunter stared at him, but her attention flicked toward his children. He might not try to stop her, but they certainly would. After a few minutes, she shrugged and claimed the only remaining chair. "I doubt I could hurt you much, anyway," she muttered, staring at the floor.

There was pause before he said, "You'd be surprised…" Then he sat down again, and the moment was over. The siblings relaxed; Lucy started to strum a quiet song that Valerie didn't recognize. Sandruu and Dan launched into a conversation about German Shepherds and how much they hated certain half ghosts but had no taste in computer experts. And underneath it all was a current of tension, the feeling that they were all waiting for something to happen. And Valerie knew they were waiting for her.

* * *

Fenton Works had been empty. It didn't seem to have been abandoned, just closed up, as though whoever owned it in this time had gone on vacation. Or something. Valerie wasn't there. 

Danny tried looking where she lived in the past…his present…but the whole block was long gone, replaced by an office building. He was afraid to simply go looking; he'd seen her older self chasing some black and white ghost earlier and did not much want to meet her. Consequently, he sat with his knees drawn up against his chest on the roof of the clock tower trying to figure out where his Valerie might have gone. It might help if he knew who had found her.

He shivered slightly and glanced around. One the one hand, he couldn't see his breath. On the other, he didn't feel the cold in his ghost form. It had to be his ghost sense, but where was the ghost? He shivered again and noticed that a cloud seemed to have dropped down while he wasn't looking; the light fog crept up on him, almost alive. It was just creepy enough to send him flying off into the sky again.

Behind him, the older version of Valerie swooped down and glared about, also looking for the ghost. She narrowed her eyes in his direction and started to go after him, but a quiet voice stopped her.

_Good morning,_ señora_ ghost hunter…_

"Who said that?" future Valerie demanded glaring around in all directions.

_We did_, the voice responded just as she came face to face with the pale, foggy being.

Valerie jerked back and aimed her weapons at the not-quite ghost, her mind reeling against the whispers that accompanied the voice. It seemed female in nature, dressed in a tattered white nightgown. Chains hung around her "body", swaying and writhing like seaweed, and one of her hands had been apparently torn off. Flesh hung in ragged strips around a wound that still dripped silver blood after thirty years. "Who are you?" the ghost hunter couldn't stop herself from asking. There was something that nagged at her memory…

_We feel your hatred, your pain. That one betrayed us, long ago. Betrayed me…Join us, and we will make him pay…_

There were too many voices; it was difficult to think. She managed to snap, "I don't work with ghosts!"

_We are not ghosts,_ Silver whispered. _We are the Malice._

Well, that was different, then.

* * *

A/N: Argh! The day I say I'm going to start updating every day again. Doesn't it just figure? Anyway..._/shuffles feet_/ I may not have planned this story in the first place, but when I realized it was going to happen, who better to show Valerie the error of her ways than the one person who could propably give evil canon Dan nightmares? 


	4. Chapter Three

Three hours into the search, and Danny was just grateful that he had not met future Valerie yet. He had, after a great deal of deliberation, meandered into the area where he'd last seen her. It seemed to be the only place he hadn't checked, not that he'd actually been going into people's houses. Maybe he should have stayed with Kat, he thought. Although he didn't think he could have looked at her for another moment. It may have been thirty years for her, but Danny's anger was still perfectly fresh. The fact that she'd been so understanding had been strange, though…

Suddenly, his ghost sense went off, and he glanced around, instinctually hunting for the cause. He found her sitting on a flat portion of roof, cross-legged and strumming a guitar. "Gypsies…tramps, and thieves," she sang, swaying slightly in time to the music.

Danny decided to ignore her and would have continued on his way if a painful blast of green energy hadn't hit him from below. He cried out and slammed into the concrete, too alarmed to recover from his fall. Sitting up slightly, he wondered who could have seen him when he was invisible, and then he staring up the barrel of a plasma rifle into a disturbingly mismatched set of eyes. "Andrew, watch your aim!" yelled a painfully familiar voice that carried nothing of the familiar mockery.

"It's a ghost!" the cyborg yelled back.

The ghost girl dropped to the ground and fiddled with her mechanical bracelets. "Righteous, man!" she exclaimed. "It's Daddy's high school year book in living color!"

Sandruu stared down at Danny for a second, closed his eye as though in pain, and reached out to help the boy up. "Sorry," he said.

"Um…it's okay?"

Someone yelled, "Hey, Fenton! How many kids you got?"

A pause, then, "That's one's not mine! Andrew, get him inside."

"Are you sure?" Sandruu asked, turning to face his father.

Dan shook his head, gave his younger self a pitiable glance, and went over to converse with the neighbor. Danny made a token resistance, trying to stare. "Is that-"

"Hey, man," Lucy interrupted. "Nice threads. You come with me, okay? Sandy, you go talk to Val." Sandruu seemed to relax at the thought and jogged inside ahead of them. "I'm Lucy in the sky with diamonds, child of flowers and spring."

"Um…I'm Danny," he offered. It wasn't until after he said it that he realized she probably already knew. But she only smiled encouragingly and led him into the kitchen.

"Hey, you like the pad, man?" she said suddenly. "Daddy doesn't like my beau; he says we shouldn't be living together, but I say live and let live, man."

"It's okay…I guess…" He was feeling woefully out of his depth. She appeared to be searching for something in his expression, but she turned away to go hunting through the fridge. "So…was that your boyfriend?"

Lucy broke into her annoyingly high-pitched laughter. "Man, you're one funny cat. Sandy's my bro." Apparently having found what she was looking for, she returned to the table and set a soda in front of him.

He was slowly putting things together. The sudden burst of activity after so many hours of nothing had succeeded in confusing him, and the fact that everyone seemed to know what was going on except him had not helped. Between the neighbor's comment and the fact that he recognized his older self, he thought he had things just about figured out. "So how many kids do I have?"

His future daughter flashed an approving grin. "Seven."

"What?"

Lucy laughed. Behind her, Dan paused in the doorway and took a moment to roll his eyes. "What did she tell you?"

The voice was almost the same, but the looks were very different. Relaxing considerably, Danny crossed his arms to glare. "That _you_ have seven kids."

His older self cringed at the mere thought. "Seven? No! Not if my life depended on it. Two is more than enough." The hippie only laughed harder.

* * *

Valerie leaned back to stare at the ceiling, arms folded behind her head. She'd spent the previous hour torn between trying to think and trying not to, and she was very confused. She liked Fenton, and she hated Phantom, and they were the same person. Not only were they the same person, but she'd been wrong. He wasn't an evil ghost. Some part of her mind tried to point out that he was probably just trying to fool her, but it had become painfully redundant. She just couldn't believe that anymore.

And yet, she still couldn't bring herself to think of Fenton and Phantom as the same person. She was grateful when a knock on the door brought her thoughts to a halt. "Come in," she called. The metallic twang had already told her who her visitor was.

Sandruu slipped in and closed the door behind him, earning a raised eyebrow. He smiled nervously. "Um, okay. Promise not to freak out."

"Why?" the girl demanded, suddenly suspicious.

"We have a guest." There was a prolonged pause, which Valerie finally broke with an impatient prompt. "He's…kind of a ghost…"

"Kind of a ghost?" Valerie repeated, folding her arms skeptically. She could hear Lucy's laughter through the door, faint voices…

Sandruu nodded, searching for the right way to word himself. He mentally cursed Lucy for sending him to talk to the angry ghost hunter; surely, she could have done a significantly better job. "He's a…sort of a ghost that you don't like much."

Valerie was on her feet as if by magic. Suddenly, she knew exactly who their guest was. Would the cyborg have been dancing around the subject if it had been, say, Skulker? Probably not. "Who is it?" she asked anyway. The venom in her voice could have killed a ghost.

"Now, calm down!" Sandruu exclaimed, his eye shifting to an alarmed green. "I won't let you hurt him!"

"What makes you think you can stop me?" Her suit formed around her, and suddenly he was staring up at a spinning world through his human eye; the mechanical one had shut down. There was a painful ringing in his head, and when he tried to stand, he found that the only limb he could move was the flesh one.

"Val," he choked out, trying to pull himself along while his machine half slowly kicked back in. "Wait!"

Valerie clutched her stolen plasma rifle, grateful that she wouldn't have to try aiming her energy cubes. She wasn't entirely certain she could properly visualize actually hitting him. She charged into the kitchen, noted and promptly ignored Dan and Lucy's presence, and leapt onto the table almost without bothering to think about it. Danny…Phantom…whoever he was, she thought, intangibly fell backwards in an effort to escape. The ghost hunter kicked the chair out of the way as she dropped next to it, shoving the barrel of her rifle against his chest.

Suddenly, it was as though time slammed to a halt. Danny, still in ghost form, cringed beneath her, looking far too much like his human self for comfort. His eyes were closed tightly, expecting the worst. He could have become intangible; she wouldn't have been able to follow. So why did he just kneel there? After a moment, a thin line of glowing light appeared between his eyelids. She almost laughed at the realization that he had opened his eyes just the barest crack to see why he wasn't dead yet, just like any scared little boy might.

"You are human…" she whispered. The weapon dropped from her nerveless fingers; unconsciously dismissing her equipment, she turned and walked past the family gathered in the doorway to drop into a chair in the living room. She heard some low muttering behind her as Sandruu, who had finally arrived, tried to figure out what was going on. A mocking comment by Lucy followed by an admonishment from their father. Danny's voice…

And it was Danny's voice. The ghostly echo never really masked it, but it had never really hit her before. "Valer-" he began.

"Don't talk to me," she interrupted.

More muttering. "No, she's being stupid!" Sandruu exclaimed.

"Andrew, enough!" Dan's voice. More muttering and the sound of metal hitting carpet considerably harder than was necessary. The older half ghost sighed. "I'll go after him. Lucy?"

"No worries, old man," the on-again-off-again hippie replied. "It's all cool. Come on, little one. Let's jam on up to the roof. We've got a totally boss view."

Then Valerie was alone again, and she wasn't sure she wanted to be. She glanced down at her ghost alarm. Lucy had kept activating it whenever she turned off her bracelets, so the young ghost hunter had simply shut it off.

She was trying not to think. She wanted to like Danny. She truly wanted to.

So why was it so hard?

After what seemed like an eternity, she stood and ventured outside. She had assumed that Lucy reached the roof by flying, but there was a staircase along the side of the house. She climbed up to the top few steps and stopped to listen.

"I know I shouldn't have lied to her," Danny was saying. "But she thought I was trying to kill her! And Technus didn't help any that one time. What was I supposed to do?"

"Truth is always the answer," was Lucy's vague, music-accompanied reply. "Lies were invented by the Man to keep us down, man. If you're lying, then you're playing right into their conspiracy."

There was a pause. "Are you sure you're supposed to be my kid?"

Valerie covered her mouth to stifle her snickering. She'd been wondering the same thing since they met. Apparently she wasn't quiet enough because after several moments, Lucy called, "Come join the ball, man! We're totally talking about you!"

She considered slipping back to ground level, but that would have been the cowardly thing to do. Danny was back in human form again, she noticed. Probably for the best. He sat hunched over and facing away, the very picture of dejection and misery. After some deliberation, Valerie chose a lawn chair on Lucy's other side, where she couldn't see him as easily. "Where'd you get your taste in music, anyway?" she asked.

Lucy merely laughed and shook her head, but Danny piped up, "From Gypsy." He turned slightly to see the two women regard him, one in amusement and the other in hostile suspicion. Sighing sadly, he turned his gaze back to his feet. At least she wasn't trying to kill him.

"So what are those bracelets for?" Valerie asked for lack of anything better to say.

The woman chuckled lightly and shook her head again; Valerie briefly wondered if that was her answer to everything. "I am totally not there without them," she answered brightly. "Completely intangible." She pretended to ignore the near-identical looks of alarmed skepticism on the teens' faces.

"Are you…serious?" Danny asked tentatively. He tried for a moment to envision what that would be like. It had been bad enough when his powers were out of control, but to not even have the chance at control? He shuddered. "Sounds horrible."

"Nah. It's a bummer when they cut out on me, but it made finding sitters a total drag for Daddy." She stopped playing long enough to laugh and add, "And that's why he finally got Gyp to drop over when he was out. She was the only one who could tolerate us both."

There was an expectant kind of silence then, punctuated by the quiet sound of their hostess singing "Dream a Little Dream." She seemed to have a knack for choosing the song Valerie least wanted to hear at any given moment. In an effort to make her quiet again, the girl leaned over to see Danny better and asked suspiciously, "How'd you know?"

It took him a second to realize that she had actually addressed him, and he was clearly fighting off delight at the prospect. "Gypsy likes that music," he said quickly, a bit too eager to answer. "She died in the seventies, and she told me the only thing she remembered of being alive was the music."

Valerie leaned back again, and Danny seemed to just wilt. She could have kicked herself, then she remembered that she was supposed to hate ghosts. It didn't seem to help. "I thought she was older than that," she said quietly.

After a moment, Lucy stood and stretched. "I think I heard Sandy," she mentioned idly. "Don't have too much fun without me."

Danny turned all the way around to stare after her in growing panic, then let his eyes trail over Valerie, who simply looked away. He relaxed marginally; at least, she wasn't trying to kill him. There was a light fog on the ground, he noticed while desperately searching for distraction. It seemed out of place considering the cloudless sky. He glanced at Valerie again, who looked away again. He stared at his feet.

"How'd it happen?"

He jumped, then blushed. "Um…lab accident." Silence. "In the basement," he added helpfully. More silence. "Weird weather…"

Valerie couldn't help herself; she smiled ever so slightly. "Must be a future thing."

Yet more silence, suddenly broken by the faint sound of a jet sled. The two teens looked around until they saw Valerie's future self, still relatively far away. "I'm…going to go see how Lucy's doing…" Danny informed the ghost hunter moments before dropping through the roof. That would take some getting used to.


	5. Chapter Four

"Because planes still fly faster than me," Dan said with a laugh as Valerie paused around the corner. "And when Tucker told me who Andrew said was here, just taking a plane seemed like the best idea."

"But why was he here to begin with if he lives in England?" Danny asked.

"Stratford," Sandruu interjected.

"Whatever."

"Repairs," the cyborg went on as though Danny hadn't spoken. "Technus built this stuff, and he's the only one who can fix it. I found Valerie when I followed him back down to the portal. Kat must have already found you."

"Hey! Yeah!" Danny exclaimed, leaning forward. "Truce with Technus?"

His older self laughed just a little maliciously. "I finally grew into my Ghostly Wail," he explained as though it should have been obvious.

There was a sudden halt in the conversation as the assembly noticed Valerie step into the kitchen, then Lucy decided to ask, "Hey, man, you still outside?" Although Danny continued to stare with that borderline-terror expression, his older self scoffed and shook his head.

The ghost hunter lifted an eyebrow at the odd turn of phrase. "She was just starting to circle the house when I got in."

There was a collective groan from the future Fentons. "Man, she'll be out there for hours!"

"I'll get the windows…" Sandruu moaned, standing.

"Man, it was a totally bi…twitchin' day, too."

"Every single time…"

"More than enough, kids!" Dan announced loudly, earning an interesting look from his younger self. The boy seemed about to make a witty comment that would probably have been answered with a glare, but Sandruu interrupted with an alarmed shout and the heavy, squealing crash of metal against metal. Three of the kitchen's occupants went straight through the walls, but Valerie still got there first.

"Oh, no…" Danny whispered. Valerie glanced at him, shaking his head in denial and drifting slowly backwards. She had never seen a ghost pale before. On her other side, his older self was in a similar condition.

The thing at Sandruu's feet was vaguely human if, by human, one meant that it had it four limbs and a head. However, its limbs were metal daggers and its head had been crushed. The cyborg backed away and opened his mouth to speak, but the thing twitched and started to stand again. Danny gave a wordless shout and blasted it, his older self barely a split second behind. Their expressions were identical and terrifyingly unreadable.

"Daddy?" Lucy ventured. She had pulled off her glasses, and her glowing eyes flickered through the entire color spectrum, or so it seemed. Suddenly, her chosen moniker, Kaleidoscope Phantom, made a great deal of sense.

"It's called a slayer," Dan answered, recovering faster than his younger self. "Lucy, leave your bracelets off. I want the two of you to go to your grandparents' house and barricade yourselves in the basement." He shook his head and turned back to the teens as though just remembering they were there. "You two go with them."

"No!" Danny yelled. "She's my responsibility!"

"And if you die, what happens to them?" Dan pointed out heatedly. "You die, then I die, and they're never born!"

"What is going on?" Valerie demanded, stepping between them. They didn't actually seem to notice and would have continued the argument if a sudden explosion hadn't heralded the loss of the front door and surrounding sections of wall. The young ghost hunter gasped at her first good look at her future self, striding through the remains.

"Hello, lover," future Valerie all but purred, her eyes fixed on Danny. "We came back for you, just like we always said we would. Together…forever…"

…_forever…_

"Over my dead body," Dan snarled, boldly jumping between the kids and the possessed woman. Danny actually allowed that, although he did place himself in front of Valerie. Sandruu dashed forward to join the boy behind his father leaving Lucy, the only truly helpless one, to find a place to hide.

_It's not _amante, whispered a confused voice into their minds.

"We're here for the ghost boy," Silver's human host added. Behind her, the fog gathered and swirled, and seemed to take the forms of various people who had clearly been murdered.

Murder victims…

Valerie let her gaze trail over to Sandruu, who stared at the shifting fog with an expression of loathing both like and unlike his father's. Suddenly, she understood why any conversations about his capture ended with "Best five months of my life." His friends had become something like that, and that was something he couldn't face. The whole realization took less than a second, and she was staring into the swirling fog again as a single word echoed in her mind.

_Malice…_

"Silver, let her go," Dan ordered. He raised an ectoplasmically charged fist, though whom he might have been aiming at was something of a puzzle. "Maybe I couldn't hurt you, then, but I can now!"

_What is this "now and then"?_ Silver whispered, honestly bewildered. _Perhaps you'd like to play with us? We're playing Serial Murder. You can be our first victim._

"Won't that be fun?" future Valerie added at the Malice's direction. And behind her, immune to the Malice's shifting, hovered Silver. The younger Valerie looked at Danny, who was clearly terrified and still trying to protect her. She looked at his older self, who appeared to feel the same way. She looked at Silver and wondered what could be so bad about a ghost that a forty-four year old man could still be so scared. Then she looked at her older self…then she really looked.

The woman's eyes, behind her helmet, were completely blank. Her mouth was twisted into a sneer that only emphasized the lack of soul within. "Is that…me?" the girl muttered, bordering on panic herself.

As if in answer, twin roars rang out from either side of Silver's potential victims. Valerie had barely any time to see the hulking brutes before Danny knocked her to the floor and made them both intangible. She cried out as gunshots ripped through them, certain that they should both have been killed. And amidst all the noise, inside their heads, Silver just laughed. After a moment, the boy twisted around and returned fire while his future self did likewise to the other creature.

"It's me she's after," he informed the man, helping Valerie stand. "She doesn't recognize you."

Dan shook his head, glared at the Malice, and said, "Fine. Go!"

Danny nodded once and shot straight through the roof. Future Valerie, predictably, summoned her jet sled to follow. Past Valerie finally seemed to find bearings her again and shouted, "What the heck was that?"

"That was Silver," Dan replied quietly.

"But who is that?" Lucy asked, creeping back through a wall.

He seemed about to say something, thought better of it, and replied, "No one important. Andrew, take care of your sister. Go into the Ghost Zone if you have to. If either one of you gets killed you're both grounded for the rest of eternity." The siblings managed half of a smile between them at the old joke and headed out. Dan drifted into the air.

"You're not going to give me orders?" Valerie was unable to stop herself from asking.

Dan froze, and his hands clenched into fists. "At this moment, I really don't care what you do." Staring off after her future self, Valerie really couldn't blame him.

* * *

A/N: You probably haven't noticed yet that I've played around with the order of my stories again. I really should just not bother. Number Twenty still stands, though. _/totally can't wait/_


	6. Chapter Five

It was late afternoon, fortunate for the city below. Aside from the slayer that got into Lucy's house, it was far too bright for most malefactors. Silver's marksmen were probably hallucinations, which left Darwin and the gorgers. After the way he beat the spirit of gluttony last time, Danny didn't expect a rematch. Of course, that had been thirty years ago…

The sound of weapons fire dragged him back to the issue at hand, and he dropped to avoid the three blasts. Future Valerie had clearly updated her equipment, so why did she use the three energy cubes he'd grown so used to? Perhaps Silver simply wasn't trying to kill him yet? He glanced back to see if she was up to something, so it should have come as no surprise when he looked forward again and nearly slammed into the ghostly psychic. With a shout of panic, he dove toward the distant pavement for a few minutes before twisting around to head back the way he came.

"Oh, lover!" future Valerie called playfully. "Don't run away!" Danny shivered involuntarily.

_You need to play with us_, Silver informed him. The image of Sandruu, Lucy, and his Valerie lying on the ground in a spreading pool of blood flashed across his vision, distracting him enough that he misjudged her aim. His back felt as though it was on fire from her second assault. He ducked further and flew beneath her again, and the two twisted around each other as Danny tried to stay close enough that she couldn't aim while still keeping out of reach. If the laughter in his head was any indication, Silver was having enough fun that she wouldn't resort to telekinesis yet.

"Valerie!" he yelled. "I know you're still in there! This isn't you! Fight her!"

_She can't hear you anymore_, amante.

"Silver, let her go!"

_She is part of me. If you join us, you can have her again. I promise…_

Danny clenched his teeth. "Yeah, I'm sure." He ducked instinctively at the sound of weapons fire and was nearly clipped by a plummeting jet sled. Someone called his name, and he glanced over to see Dan and the younger Valerie.

"Are you okay?" the older half ghost demanded. Danny nodded. "Good. The kids got away. Now, take Valerie to Fenton Works and hide!"

"I'm not hiding from her!" Danny retorted.

_Not that you could._

The older half ghost clutched at his throat suddenly, gasping, moments before he was flung aside like a rag doll. Danny fired into the swirling mist behind the ghost hunter and was rewarded with the sharp projection of agony that spread through his skull. Future Valerie blinked uncertainly and looked around. "Wha-"

_No!_ Silver exclaimed, reasserting her control. _You are mine. Well done, _amante_, but I don't lose so easily._

Valerie shook her head in disbelief. She found it difficult to form a coherent thought about the whole situation, completely unable to understand how she could have become like that. True, she'd been a bit mindless when she first found out, but she'd also been blinded with grief. The feeling had faded. How could this other version have maintained such an attitude for thirty years and, more importantly, why would she want to?

_We feel your pain_, whispered that chilling voice. Valerie was vaguely aware of the two half ghosts fighting off her older self, but the sheer volume of countless voices drove away all rational thought. _We understand your hatred. Join us, and we will make him ours…_

"Join…you…?" the girl muttered, drifting forward slightly. A sudden ringing blow against the side of her helmet drove the whispers from her mind, and she bit back a curse as she was thrust into Danny's arms.

"Get her out of here!" Dan commanded, turning back to the fight.

Danny seemed on the verge of an objection but thought better of it. He tugged on Valerie's arm and started flying. "Come on. I don't think we want to be in hearing range."

After a few minutes of simply running on autopilot, she recovered enough to gasp, "What is that thing? It…I…it's like I…?"

"Don't worry about," Danny answered quietly. "Silver gets in your head, makes you see things that aren't there."

"I was almost under her control."

Conversation was forced to a halt as Dan's Ghostly Wail echoed across the sky. Valerie tried to whirl around and stare, but Danny continued to pull her along. He wasn't entirely sure that power would work on Silver. It was a sound-based attack, and she couldn't hear unless she "borrowed" her host's ears. Despite her psychic tendencies, she couldn't even read minds unless she was in her victim's head already. He dropped as they drew close to Fenton Works.

"Yesterday morning…" Valerie muttered, momentarily forgetting that said morning had happened thirty years ago. "That banshee attack…that was you?"

Danny grinned apologetically. "I didn't actually mean to do that much damage. I was aiming for Walker." He became human to duck through the ghost shield, and the two slipped inside the building.

Unsurprisingly, all the lights were off. Gadgets and tools littered most flat surfaces, and a light dusting of fog covered everything. It had been recently disturbed in the kitchen, probably by Sandruu and Technus. He couldn't help but wonder where his parents were and whether or not his older self lived in the home. The door to the basement lab creaked opened and an eye that appeared to have been caught somewhere between the colors green and violet peeked out. "Where's Daddy?" Lucy whispered.

"Still fighting Silver," Danny answered. "Don't worry; he'll be fine."

A tapping noise startled the teens, but it was merely Sandruu's feet against the linoleum as he entered the kitchen behind them. His single red eye was almost nightmarish considering the darkened surroundings. "Are you sure?" he asked, torn between the knowledge that Danny would one day be his father, and anger that he had left the man behind. "I've never seen him look scared before."

"Even if Silver beats him, she won't kill him," the boy explained. "She knows he means something to me, so she'll just hold him hostage as a…prize."

There was a bewildered silence that Valerie finally broke. "You mean, like a game?"

"It's a long story. Please don't make me tell it."

Sandruu looked like he was about to anyway, but Danny shuddered and gasped. They both jumped to wary attention while Valerie belated remembered that he did that when other ghosts were around, then Dan's voice called, "It's me…" He joined them, almost unconsciously becoming human again.

"Daddy!" Lucy squealed, erupting from behind the basement door to fling herself around his neck.

The man managed a faint smile. "Come on, kids. I told you to hide in the basement. Everyone get down there. She could recover any minute."

"So it worked?" Danny asked as they all complied.

Dan shook his head, his eyes acquiring that haunted look that Valerie had long since learned to hate. She briefly hated herself for being responsible for it. "Not on Silver, no," he replied cryptically. They hardly needed a translation.

It seemed an eternity before Sandruu's tactlessness kicked in. "Will she be okay?" He seemed genuinely worried, then genuinely sad when his father shook his head. "Did you-"

"Andrew Jack Fenton!" Lucy exclaimed. "Quit flapping your lips, man! He'll tell us when he's up for it."

"What happened to me?" Valerie muttered, unable to shake her older self's blank stare from her mind.

Sandruu opened his mouth, then glanced askance at his sister, who glanced at her father, who shrugged and waved his hand dismissively. A few more seconds of silent communication went by while the siblings apparently argued about which of them would tell it. Valerie, an only child, began to wonder if they were somehow telepathic or if it was just a sibling thing; Danny didn't appear to be surprised. Finally, Lucy said, "Things were always a little weird. You…_she_ never liked him much, but they had kind of a truce."

"Until gr…Damon died," Sandruu interrupted, earning a peeved glare from the rest of his family. Valerie and Danny exchanged glances, both wondering what he'd been about to say.

"You knew," Dan said, picking up the thread. "It was…complicated, to say the least, but we got along well enough. Until Damon died."

"And that was the day Vlad learned not to mess with me!" Sandruu announced.

"Sandy!"

"Why are you calling your brother 'Sandy'?"

"Why does she call him 'Sandy'?" Danny whispered to Valerie, who merely shook her head.

While the ill-timed remark had served to lighten the atmosphere, it grew depressed again far too quickly. "What happened to Dad?" the young ghost hunter demanded.

There was another prolonged silence, the kind that indicated that no one wanted to be responsible for the bad news. "It was the day the rest of the town found out about me," Dan sighed. "It wasn't exactly news to most people what with the two of them, but that was the day it was confirmed. What happened was a horrible, tragic accident, but you refused to believe that."

"That was the first time Andrew lost his mind," Lucy whispered.

"I knew exactly what I was doing," her brother refuted, a dangerous edge to his voice. For a brief moment, the green glow of his normal eye overpowered the red glow of his mechanical one, and the two teens repressed a shudder.

"But what happened?" Valerie pressed, almost desperate to know.

"A ghost attack," Dan answered, though that much was obvious. "The worst one since Pariah. A creature named Necrowind raised an army of zombies. You said something about it happening once before…?" He trailed off helplessly. "I don't remember much of it, so I can't really defend myself. But Damon was one of the casualties, and you always blamed me."

Valerie covered her mouth and let out a shuddering sigh, then walked as quickly as dignity would allow into a far corner. Sandruu opened his mouth and quickly shut it again at the sight of his father's warning glare. Danny shuddered and found his own secluded place to think. There had to be a way to keep all of that from happening.

Wasn't there?


	7. Chapter Six

_You know he did it on purpose._

Valerie blinked back tears, but they escaped anyway to drip onto her tightly clenched fists.

_You know that, right?_

Danny would never have killed anyone, not on purpose. Ghost or not, he was still human.

_Humans can be evil, too._

But Danny wasn't.

_He hasn't been Danny for thirty years._

She could almost hear the cries, the pleas for mercy as people fled their former hero's wrath. They didn't understand; they couldn't understand what could drive a person to such murderous extremes.

_But is it really an extreme? Violence is an art and a game. It is a thing of beauty, and the feeling is most satisfying. To hold a pillow over someone's face as they struggle beneath you, to know that you hold the very power of life and death in your hands, to know that death is nothing more than a change, that your loved one will always be with you…_

Put like that, was it all bad?

_When you take a life, you make it part of you…_

And unbidden, the memory of Dan standing over her father, his eyes blazing red and a sneer on his otherwise emotionless face. A memory she was beyond realizing that she couldn't have had.

_He killed your father. Kill him, and they will both be part of you._

Yes, kill him and-

"No!" Valerie shouted, throwing herself backwards in an effort to escape the mental trap. She put her hands over her ears as though to block out the voices, only vaguely aware of her audience. "Get out of my head!" Pain lanced through her wrist, finally driving Silver's voice away, and she fell to her knees. Sandruu relaxed his grip, but didn't let go. Someone, possibly Lucy, demanded to know how the psychic ghost had made it through the ghost shields.

"Valerie!" Danny said fervently, his blue eyes centimeters away and his hands tightly around her shoulders. "Valerie, listen to me. Don't listen to her."

_Listen to yourself…_

"Silver, shut up!"

"He did it on purpose." The world seemed to pause at the voice of Valerie's older self. Then Dan jumped to his feet, and the moment was gone.

"You're okay?" he gasped gratefully, almost without thinking.

She took the last few steps, eyes fixed on Danny. What was left of her gear sparked slightly; her helmet was completely gone. A silver dog-like creature with a vaguely human face trotted at her heels: Silver, projecting the image of a mauler instead of her own.

_Do you remember Baltimore?_ the psychic asked. _You wanted me, then. Why do you run from me, now?_

"Leave them alone," Dan said, his voice low and menacing. "If you want him, you have to go through me."

Laughter echoed through their minds, but it was future Valerie who actually responded. She smirked and raised some futuristic weapon. "If that's how you want it." She fired. The older half ghost was unable to dodge or even shield himself as Silver telekinetically held him. There was a moment when everyone wondered what happened, then she let go. He crumpled lifelessly to the ground. Valerie cringed and buried her face in Danny's shirt.

_Now, _amante… Silver began. She was interrupted by a squeal of metal. Lucy yelled something, but it did nothing to stop the sickening crack of skull meeting wall at a high speed. That sound was followed by the second crack of a neck snapping; both of the teens had turned away by then. There was a metal thud, possibly Sandruu discovering that his fist went right through Silver.

"Andrew, stop!" Lucy sobbed.

_Yes!_ Silver exclaimed joyously. _Such rage! Such a killer! A more wonderful prize than even my _niño! _We will meet again, one day…_

Danny risked a look back at the carnage. Lucy sobbed uncontrollably, leaning over her father's body. Valerie's older self lay against the far wall, her neck tilted at an unnatural angle. In the pale green glow of Sandruu's eye, he thought he could see blood on the wall. The cyborg turned then, his face a mask of rage, and lunged for the still-living Valerie. "You did this…" he hissed.

There was one, final crack as something heavy hit the protective metal plate in the side of Sandruu's head. He cried out and hit the floor as his machinery died. After a moment, his common sense intruded. His eye returned to its usual hue, and he dropped his head against the floor. "What did I do…?" he whispered.

"You could have stopped that," Danny muttered accusingly. Valerie turned her head to see whom he was talking to. It took her a moment to place why the time-obsessed ghost looked familiar.

Clockwork nodded once. "I could have, but that would have been interfering. This, however, I can do. Andrew, do you think you can keep your temper in check long enough to help in the past? Or do you need more time?"

"Why don't you send Luce?" the cyborg groaned without opening his eye.

"Because I'm asking you." There was an edge to his voice that Danny had never heard before. Apparently, it got through even Sandruu's thick skull because he gulped slightly and nodded. "Good. Lucy, I want you to go home and wait for me there. I have something else for you."

She seemed about to object, but thought better of it. She lingered for a moment to kiss her father goodbye, then fled. Clockwork sighed heavily, almost regretfully, and turned his attention back to Danny and Valerie. "As for the two of you, I'm sure you've realized you weren't supposed to be here. Do you think you're strong enough to prevent this?" Although his words were meant for them both, his eyes were on Valerie. She didn't answer. The ghost clicked the button on his staff.

Five minutes passed. "I hate him sometimes…"

"Why didn't you dodge? I thought you were going to make that last longer."

"Silver wouldn't let me."

There was a pause. "All three of us are going to burn for that."

"I can't believe that worked."

"Your son…"

"Is going to kill us both when he gets back. Did you really have to do the blood on the wall?"

Valerie faded slightly and reformed as Kat, the disgruntled thespian. "If I still had a body, that would have been real." She wagged her finger slightly at nothing in particular. "Your son…"

"Has a temper. I know." Dan sat up and rolled his neck, then cringed. "Lucy's going to kill me."

"Temper? You call that a temper?"

"I need to do something about Silver. Clockwork never said she was going to be here."

"He probably knew you'd object."

"Damn right, I would have." He shook his head. "I thought she was gone."

"Well, now you can deal with her. I'm going home. You'd better go get Val down from that flagpole."

Dan blanched, paling slightly. "I hope we changed time enough that she was in on this."

Kat snickered and let her time medallion fall around his neck to join the one already there, one that had not been there five minutes previous. "I don't envy you finding out. Cheerio."

* * *

A/N: And now I'm going to clarify a point. For Sandruu, this is before he went back in time. However, he did meet Necrowind when he attacked the second time. Keepin mind, Sandruu's a bit too dense to just lie about something, and even Valerie decided that he thought he was telling the truth.For Valerie, even future Valerie, it's now happened twice before: the one Sandruu went back tostop, and the one they're all talking about.Danny, if you all will recall, was half brainwashed and half out of his mind and starving to death. He doesn't remember either of Necrowind's attacks, and no one ever told him. 

But you have to figure out what's going on in the end there for yourselves. All I'm saying is that no one expected Silver to be there, with the possible exception of Clockwork. (Heck, that surprised even me. I wasn't planning it...)


	8. Epilogue

Danny blinked and looked around, then jumped as a voice said, "Welcome back."

He whirled around to see…himself swiveling around in his desk chair, obviously bored. Looking around slightly, he realized that he was, in fact, in his room and turned his puzzled expression back to the apparition. "Shade?"

Shade chuckled lightly. "Can I keep your dad? He's funnier than my dad."

Danny stared for a moment longer, then scoffed. "No, you can't have my dad. What are you doing here?"

"Damage control," he answered shortly. It had somehow become his favorite phrase of the day. "Me and Val…my Val have been posing as you and your Val since last night. It was actually funny, watching her try to tolerate Star. They're not exactly friends in my world. So what happened?"

Danny's eyes fixed on the floor, and he shook his head. "Something I'm going to make sure doesn't." No matter what, he added silently.

* * *

The cemetery had always been a source of comfort as one of the few places people seldom went willingly. She didn't like people much; she never had. They were inferior beings, Neanderthals eating mud with no taste in the finer things. 

Charles Winchester III. She laughed slightly at the name of her childhood hero. M.A.S.H. had been her favorite television show because of him. He was so knowing, so superior to everyone around him. He'd been her first obsession, in fact. She thought it was a pity she could no longer taste cognac. She'd acquired a great liking for it until her stepfather caught her in the liquor cabinet. Not that padlocks ever stopped her for long.

Then was theater and Phantom of the Opera. Well, Erik had ruined that one for her. Suddenly, the beloved illusion she'd maintained for so long gave her a sense of claustrophobia. No longer could she bear to be seen as a fourteen-year-old girl, the way she'd looked the day she fled her body for good. She'd never had regrets before, but she found herself wondering if she should have tried harder back then. She was certain she could have learned control if she'd only made the effort.

The stone was old and weathered. It was a milestone in her life, a symbolic representation of who she was. She put her hand over the gouge she'd once blasted into it, removing the date of death as a statement that she would never die.

She wondered what was taking Danny so long. She'd expected his enraged revenge several hours prior.

"Kat!" he called then.

"Speak of the devil," she sighed quietly. Louder, she said, "Is that Dad's work I'm hearing?"

"It's Valerie."

"What was she saying about Technus' work?" the ghost hunter whispered.

"I'll…tell you later…" the ghost replied. "Kat, turn around. We need to talk."

Kat did not comply, although she did stand. "There's nothing to talk about. I'm not apologizing."

"Yeah," Danny huffed. "I've figured that out by now. You never admit to doing anything wrong, do you?"

"Of course, not. I am perfect in every way."

"Then turn around."

Several seconds passed. Valerie looked between the two and wondered what was going on. At last, she shook her head. "Why bother? She doesn't care."

"Don't care?" Kat exclaimed, whirling around. "Apologies are a dime a dozen! They are meaningless. What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry? Because 'sorry' can't begin to encompass it!"

"Why did you do it in the first place?" Danny demanded.

She closed her eyes and looked away. "Because I'm the worst example of egomania that humanity can possibly conjure up. I am, as you're so fond of pointing out, my father's daughter. That's something I take great pride in." She tried to meet his gaze and found that she still couldn't. "And…I'm sorry…"

"I think you should go home for a few days," Danny said after a moment. Kat nodded acceptance and vanished.

* * *

A/N: Next up: Lament Impropmtu. And let me tell you, it certainly was impromptu. I'd like to thank everyone for reading; Darkflame, Sleep Warrior, and Random for making the effort to review every new chapter. That really means the world to me. And WingsofMorphius just for being so cool and awesome and writing Moments of Clarity, which is awesome. If you haven't read it, go do so! _/squeals in fangirlish glee/_


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